Thayer Introduces Peer Education Collaborative

Thayer Academy successfully launched its Peer Education Collaborative earlier this fall and is already seeing positive results. 

“It’s going great,” said Peer Education Collaborative Director Leigh Carroll from her office on the first floor of Cahall Campus Center. “I’m really excited about the program.” 

In April of this year Thayer was one of only a handful of schools to receive an educational leadership grant from the Brooklyn-based Edward E. Ford Foundation. The $250,000 grant provides Thayer with the unique opportunity to create — in partnership not just with the Thayer community but with private and public schools as well — a curriculum to train juniors and seniors to lead classes for younger students in their own schools and in under-resourced schools in Massachusetts and beyond via Zoom.

The program, said Carroll, is designed to empower teens and preteens in two key areas: health & wellness and civil discourse. The centerpiece of the program is the Peer Leadership Fellowship Course, a first-of-its kind honors program that trains Upper School students as peer educators in those two areas. The course has three seniors and three juniors. Under Carroll’s instruction and with the help of expert consultants, the students are learning how to teach fellow students in younger grades to deal with stigmatized topics and how to communicate across lines of difference. Health and wellness topics include mental health and emotional well-being, including how best to deal with anxiety, stress, and emotions. There’s also a component which focuses on healthy relationships of all kinds as well as communication within those relationships. 

According to Carroll, the students are finishing up with the theory portion of the course and are working to create their first peer education event, a 60-minute workshop on stress and how to deal with it, for a 9th grade health class. To do that, the six students are taking their own deep dive into all aspects of stress. 

“They’ll become experts in the topic and then they’ll create the workshop utilizing evidence-based curricula on the subject along with their own expertise on both the content and their peers” said Carroll. “They’ve got to know what they’re talking about.” 

The key to the program, said Carroll, is the concept of “near-peer teaching,” which is when students teach fellow students who are close to them in age. Research has shown this to be an incredibly effective form of instruction because the slightly older students are still seen as one of the peer group, and therefore credible, while also being respected role models highly trained in the topic and facilitation. 

“All those pieces need to be in place for it to be as effective as it is,” said Carroll, who is also teaching a similar course as an 8th grade elective so that those Middle School students can then teach their peers in the younger grades. 

Carroll pointed out many benefits of the new program. First, there’s the students who are learning about health & wellness and civil discourse from their trained and trusted peers. Second, there’s the peer teachers themselves who gain expertise on those two important topics. And widening the lens further, there’s what Carroll defines as “the ripple effect,” where the students teaching the classes and the students attending the classes bring what they’ve learned to their friends in the Thayer community and beyond. 

“It can impact the school on a broader level,” Carrol said. 

One important event in the program will take place Saturday, Nov. 15, when Lisa Damour, an internationally known clinical psychologist and best-selling author who serves as an expert consultant for the collaborative, will lead an on-campus training session for Carroll’s peer leadership course as well as student leaders — members of the Student Government, leaders of school clubs, and team captains. Carroll emphasized that students from a number of other schools have been invited and will attend this workshop, which speaks to the collaborative nature of this initiative.

“We want Thayer to be a hub of best practices for education where other schools can join with us,” Carroll said.